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75% is extremely high, these are some numbers for various EU countries:

from this study. The data are a little old, but only two counties in that list haave over 40% and most have far less.

is water metered in Norway?

75% is extremely high, these are some numbers for various EU countries:

from this study. The data are a little old, but only two counties in that list haave over 40% and most have far less.

is water metered in Norway?

I've never been a big fan of flash memory, given that it has a finite number of write cycles before a memory bit fails (varying between 1 and 100million write cycles). The probability may be low that an individual bit may need to flip so many times in it's lifetime, but it's still an issue.. A lot of care must be taken by the firmware engineer to handle this. There are a lot of job postings for firmware engineers that understand flash..

I'm a huge fan of FRAM. It has a lifecycle limit that is quoted at being 10 trillion write cycles (some mention at it being infinite). The memory density is lower, but is a lot more reliable. It's biggest issue is that the density is lower. For a spacecraft, I'd much rather have a board of these 2Mbit FRAMS then a large flash chip. They use these things in smart meters, etc. In embedded systems, you have to be really careful not to write to the flash too often out of risk of damaging the flash. Most fast SD cards have their own dedicated microcontroller (ARM9, etc) to do what they can to extend the life of the flash..

A datasheet of an FRAM device: http://www.fujitsu.com/downloa...

One question I have is how FRAM compares to NAND-flash in a harsh radiation environment, and what are the radiation differences on mars vs the earth. How many vendors offer rad-hard processes for FRAM, and how do they perform?

Here is one link I could find on FRAM, but the report from 2011 is not clear:

http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs...

As your sources explain, the practice of writing is important for learning. Through writing we develop thoughts, compose them, as fyngyrz says below, reformulate them. Writing is a way of thinking.

The issue, however, is not writing: it is handwriting. Typing, printing and cursive (I hesitate to include texting, as I find even swype/swiftkey excruciatingly slow, and I'm pretty sure using my thumb would bring on early arthritis) are all methods of writing. The links you include speak only of writing, not handwriting. They are not about the importance of cursive.

I strongly suspect that the different technical affordances of handwriting compared to typing do indeed lead to different learning experiences. One enables editing, the other demands sentences be formulated before they are written, and that subsequent words be adapted to what has already put down. Are such differences educationally significant?

One study found handwriting enhanced student composition more than did typing, though the authors put this down more to fluency (speed) and point to the importance of teaching touch-typing. This might actually support the Finnish position. Another article theorizes that there might be benefits to manual writing. A study of university student essay examinations found no difference in performance. This study found grade 6 students could type faster than they could write by hand.

This is just the result of a quick search, but I don't see strong evidence one way or the other.

Personally, my handwriting is awful. My teachers didn't even teach me how to hold a pen correctly (I have been unable to correct by habit of using all 5 fingers). Through university I took notes in my own simplified printing (each letter one stroke with at most one reversal), a system I still use when speed matters. Recently I learned that movement should come from the arm, not the wrist; for the first time, my handwriting became legible. Learning to type, however, felt like it opened up the world to me. I wish I could write fluent cursive. Is Finland doing the right thing? Darned if I know.

Short of growing spinnarets on a tissue sheet from cultured spider cells, (which would give the exact organs needed), there is no way to fully replicate the features of a spider's spinnaret at this time.

According to , the processes that transform the spinning dope from an disordered liquid crystal solution to insoluble fibers involves mechanical compression coupled with saline ion removal, and that the rate of draw from the spinning duct has a profound correlation with the tensility of the resulting fibers.

This suggests that a "tapered silicon nanoneedle array" that has been doped to wick away saline ions from the needle's interior through the walls of the shaft, coupled with a controlled rate of draw, and a carefully selected for mechanical pore size, tube length, and taper, could result in a passable approximation of spider silk.

It does not need to absolutely perfect; it just needs to approximate the features of spider silk. Perfect replication is likely not possible with current nano-technology.

While I did contemplate things on my own when starting on the energy/thermodynamics trip I soon noticed that other people had done a lot of work before me. The post above covers some range of views over time, it begins with a Victorian at the start of the fossil fuel age, continues with Rickover at the dawn of the nuclear age, and implicitly ends with some people at resilience.org that are heavily influenced by "The Limits to Growth". I could have gone the Terence McKenna Route on the other hand which would have given me the opportunity to point out how thoroughly he understood our situation and spun it forth into his "humanity must achieve transcendence" theme.

Regarding your view that "civilization cannot exist without cheap labor", I could imagine that one could rephrase that as specialization/increasing complexity needs increased energy inputs. From here http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs... "This means that growing complexity implies growing energy consumption.". Since we appear to be in the process of failing with that (net energy wise) I'm really frustrated with news about a new gilded age, this is exactly the opposite of McKenna's "universe as novelty generator" view (Non-equilibrium thermodynamics doesn't sound flamboyant enough), also it just means decline.

So please go forth and continue to be original, also note that going Native American may not be possible due to our waste problem called global warming.

> Content creators don't like the idea, they'd like to earn a living

This is contradicted by the existence of open source software, Wikipedia, and the books that I write and give away. I am not the only one who does this, http://www.intechopen.com/ hosts many journals and books that are open. Lady Gaga has given away literally billions of plays of her music videos.

There are other ways to get value than by selling the content itself. In a world where anything digital can be copied at minimal cost, trying to make a living from restricting an item that isn't scarce is asking to fail.

I don't think CO2 is really that significant of a cause in AGW.

Who are you, and why should we care what you think?

How much warming does a slab of concrete or asphalt make, as opposed to the land being covered by green vegetation?

The total paved land is only a small slice. You're talking about a false dichotomy. Also, you're way off on the potential effects of cities on albedo:

Asphalt albedo ranges from about 0.05 to 0.20 (Akbari and Thayer, 2007), depending on the age and makeup of the asphalt. Its albedo typically increases somewhat as its colour fades with age. A typical concrete has an albedo of about 0.35 to 0.40 when constructed; these values can decrease to about 0.25 to 0.30 with normal usage. With the incorporation of slag or white cement, a concrete pavement can exhibit albedo readings as high as 0.70. As shown in Figure 5, concrete has a significantly higher albedo than asphalt, either new or old. In fact, concrete usually has a higher albedo than almost every other material that is typical to urban areas, including grass, trees, coloured paint, brick/stone and most roofs.

See the link for more information, with citations. The truth is that cities can be constructed such that they have lower albedo than forests! The earth needs a certain amount of vegetation for homeostasis, insofar as that is even possible. How it is distributed is also highly relevant. But cities are not inherently heat producers. In fact, since they enable higher efficiencies, they can actually reduce anthropocentric warming.

The real problem is the more general deforestation. While approximately as much area is forested as during native American occupation by some accounts, the overall biomass is much less, as the trees are smaller. Some species, notably including Sequoia Sempervirens, grow faster and thus fix more CO2 when they are larger. Old growth redwood once covered the entire West Coast from below Point Sur well into Canada. The scruffy mixed forests planted behind the logging do not fulfill the same function as the elder forests which preceded them in basically any way.

Yes, of course the first electric car was around before the Model T and there still isn't an "affordable" electric car. In 1900, there were 1575 electric cars registered in the entire U.S., compared with 936 internal combustion cars. So, in 1900, electric cars were more popular than internal combustion cars, yet today when there a millions of internal combustion cars registered in the U.S. the number of electric cars is somewhere in the vicinity of .01% of that number. Exactly how long is this technology going to take to mature?

Quite right. I do research on AI for embedded systems, specifically Integer Neural Networks (is it a shameless plug if I don't profit from it? creative commons book chapter.). By cutting out FP you can make all those low cost (sub $1) microcontrollers pretty powerful. Neural Networks cut out a lot of the processing by just making good guesses, then cutting out FP makes an implementation very light on resources.

Is h.264 really that big?

A search of Google Shopping returns about 67,900 hits for "H.264."

The H.264 camcorder ranges from the $150 "Flip" to the $21,000 Panasonic AG-3DA1 which records 1080/60i 3D to two 32 GB SSDs.

H.264 is supported by your HDTV. Your Blu-Ray player. It is deeply entrenched in theatrical production, home video, broadcast, cable and satellite distribution, medical, industrial and security applications. Towards Diagnostically Robust Medical Ultrasound Video Streaming using H.264